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Sunday, April 24, 2011

# Cloud computing on portable devices could prove to be a very good way of going green.

Go green with the cloud computing

According to carbonfootprint.com, a PC running for an hour generates 40-80 grams of co2, while it consumes about 60-90 % of normal workload power even when idle. It’s also surprising to know that even power – saving modes like ‘sleep’ or ‘standby’ can consume as much as 120 watts of power.

With raising concern over global warming, we all want to do our bit to reduce carbon footprint and save the environment. And one way to do this is by adapting green computing. Now we may wonder what has cloud computing got to do with green computing. After all cloud computing at the end of the day requires servers to store all the data. And we keep hearing about how software giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and others are building huge data centers to meet the growing demands of the ever-increasing number if Internet-users. So don’t these huge data centers that require massive amounts of electricity increase the carbon footprint?

While this is true to some extent, in reality however the manufacturers of data centers are actively taking initiatives to minimize the impact on the environment. Also the leading players in the industry are taking efforts to reduce their carbon footprint and are even addressing the issue of e-waste.

Considering all this, cloud computing, especially on portable devices, be it smart phones, net books or ultra-low-powered laptops, could computing prove to be a very good way of going green.

# Portable computingdevices consumes much less energy compared to a desktop or laptop

In comparison to a traditional PC or a laptop, portable computing devices consume much less energy because they do not need continuous power supply. They just need to be charged not more than once in a day depending on usage. It’s a fact that today, most people don’t really need a high end PC as their usage is limited to browsing, email, social networking, banking, watching videos, listening to music etc. And this can be easily achieved on a smart phone or on any of the portable devices that can be used for cloud computing.

And the trend of mobile computing is here to say. According to a Gartner report, by 2013, the total number of PCs will reach 1.78 billion in three years, the number of smart phones and number of web-enable phones will shoot past 1.82 billion units and continue to rise. This will force more websites to be optimized for usage on smart phones and other portable, while most of the popular websites have already been optimized.

Looking at this trend, it’s very tempting to assume that, with an increase in the number of ultra-portable computing devices, there could be a drastic decline in the demand for standard desktop PC’s. Of course the high end ones would always stay, for very good reasons. Nevertheless, if each one of us takes up cloud computing to perform most of the basic tasks, then we can definitely help in reducing our carbon footprint.